Raise the Hammer

Comment 20991

By HaveYourSay (anonymous) | Posted April 09, 2008 at 09:16:29

Hello everyone,

The City of Hamilton is holding open houses in relation to the possibility of expanding the urban boundary to create more "employment lands" (industrial parks). This is part of the attempt to justify a need for a giant "aerotropolis" industrial park to the south of the City.

In order to justify the conversion of our City's farmlands into an aerotropolis, the City must demonstrate that there is insufficient industrial land withing the existing urban area. A big part of this relates to "brownfield" opportunities (breathing new life into unused or underused industrial land), because for every acre that we can find within the bayfront or other historical industrial areas, an acre of farmland is spared.

Hamiltonians for Progressive Development is concerned that the City has vastly underestimated the extent of brownfield opportunities within the urban boundary, resulting in a vast overestimation of the amount of farmland that we need to industrialize. Indeed, it is not clear that any urban boundary expansion is necessary to accomodate Hamilton 's future employment growth; if we, as a community, decide that we want to put an end to urban sprawl and want to refocus our efforts on rejuvenating our lower-city employment areas, this is the time to communicate this to our City representatives.

Please do consider attending one of the open houses and expressing your interest in seeing a larger role for brownfields. The details regarding time and place are set out below.